Do you think this week Kirk Cousins was humming Willie Nelson’s “On the Road Again” as he made way back to Minnesota? He was acquired by the Vikings from the Raiders on the National Football League’s trade deadline. The Raiders got a third-round draft choice in exchange, compensation that seemed a little light to me given how desperate the Vikings were to acquire a quarterback.
Consider this, the Vikings have the best defense in the NFL and if they don’t win in Green Bay this Sunday they will fall to last place in the NFC North Division.
Why?
They combine the best defense with the worst offense. This past Monday night, they hosted the AFC East Division leading Buffalo Bills with Carson Wentz at quarterback … it was a pitiful attempt to play the position. His inability to move the Vikings offense against an average Buffalo defense resulted in the Bills running 79 offensive plays and the “three-and-out” Vikings only 46 offensive plays.
In time, that meant the Vikings defense was on the field for 43 minutes of the 60-minute game clock while the Bills stop unit only had to work for 17 minutes. What happened in the game was what one might expect from the workload put on the Minnesota defense … it kept the Vikings in the game as long as it could, the score was only 13 to 6 after three quarters, before Buffalo tacked on two scores in the fourth quarter to pad their 23-6 road win.
It just isn’t right to force a defense to work this hard. And the Vikings, on the NFL trade deadline, had to do something while their off-season acquisition Kyler Murray didn’t appear to be the answer at the most important position on the field. We might assume that instead of the Vikings fans buying drinks at the bar for their quarterback they would expect Wentz to pay their bar tab.